(This column was published in the print edition of the North Shore News on Mar 12, 2003)
Can torture ever be justified?
By Leo Knight
Former Vancouver police officer and the author of the book Shots Fired, Gary Cameron, sent me an article from the Washington Post last week that highlighted a fascinating ethical, moral and legal dilemma for police that I still haven't quite got my head around.
The story emanated from Germany and highlighted a case of abduction and murder where 27-year-old law student Magnus Gaefgen is on trial. Here's the Reader's Digest version.
The 11-year-old son of a prominent Frankfurt banker was kidnapped on his way home from school. The resulting investigation led to a requested million-dollar ransom being placed in a watched drop. Gaefgen picked up the ransom and was promptly arrested.
I might add this type of situation happens in the largest percentage of authenticated kidnapping cases, regardless of jurisdiction. The problem occurred in this instance, when the suspect, once arrested, refused to tell the police where the young boy was. According to the evidence at bar, he was toying with the police officers interviewing him.
It went on for hours as the frustrated investigators pressed the suspect to tell them where the boy was before it was too late. He played the anxious cops like a fiddle, sending them down one false trail after another, all the while saying the boy was definitely alive.
The Frankfurt police deputy chief, Wolfgang Daschner, had enough. Fearing the boy would die if the charade continued much longer, he authorized the use of torture to extract the location of the boy from Gaefgen. He even put it in writing. He ordered his detectives to extract all possible information "by means of the infliction of pain, under medical supervision
and subject to prior warning."
The startling revelation has triggered a national debate in Germany on the question, "Is torture by the police ever justified?" Daschner has also become the subject of a criminal investigation himself for issuing the order.
He justifies his actions by saying the police never actually inflicted the torture. The mere mention of the incipient pain had Gaefgen singing like a canary within minutes. Unfortunately, when police arrived at the right location provided by the shaken suspect, the young boy was already dead.
The debate is as relevant here as in Germany or, for that matter, in any other Western democracy where the presumption of innocence is the "Golden thread that courses through the fabric of our justice system" to paraphrase British author John Mortimer.
But perhaps, it is made more so with the news last week of the arrest of the al Qaida number 3 guy, Khalid Shaikh Mohammed in Pakistan.Over a week later we do not know where Khalid is. We do know he is in American custody. But not exactly where, except we have been told he is not in North America.
Khalid is purported to be the mastermind behind the Sept. 11 attacks on America and, indeed, behind virtually every al Qaida attack on the West since the first World Trade Center bombing in 1993. So, why would a man on the FBI's Most Wanted Terrorist list, not be returned to the contiguous United States to face the music for the most shocking attacks on the
United States since Pearl Harbor?
With news reports that the noose is tightening around an area on the Afghani-Pakistan border thought to be the hiding place of the world's most wanted man - old Weirdbeard himself - the obvious conclusion is that the information potentially available from Khalid is too important to risk bringing him back to the United States, where he will be able to invoke
constitutional rights such as the right to silence and the investigators are required to play by the rules.
Nobody in their right mind, which of course leaves out those crass anti-American pinheads who have been so vocal in recent weeks, would suggest the information possessed by Khalid isn't incredibly important to the prosecution of the war on terror. But can even the most hawkish among us argue that torture is alright? Do the ends justify the means as the Daschner
order would try to portray?
It's a fascinating question, and I asked several police officers about the German case on the weekend. To a man, they all said, "To hell with the rules, save the kid."
The problem then becomes what happens to the transgressor? Under our current system, if police uses torture, threats, promises or other inducements, then any information and evidence resulting from that is not admissible in court.
So, let's look again at the German case. A young boy is kidnapped. After the controlled ransom drop, a suspect is arrested. That suspect toys with investigators until torture, as a last hope to find the child victim, is authorized.
When the suspect finally coughs up the info and the boy is found, albeit dead, he is charged with the horrific crimes. Because the rules were broken, should he then walk away scot-free as would happen here given the same set of circumstances?
Should the end justify the means? If so, should the obviously guilty walk away scot-free because the rules were broken by the state in dire circumstances?
It is a question worth debating.
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